SHADES OF BLACK: NUR RUN, NIFROST, ADOPERTA TENEBRIS, SATURNIAN MIST, SOREM, GLYPH, LURID, DEATHFUCKER

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Sep 052021
 

 

You want to know how the sausage gets made? Okay, I see one hand at the back of the room and that’s all I need even though the rest of you are recoiling.

When I woke up at 4:30 a.m. this morning I had about half a dozen candidates I was considering for this column based on previous listening. But I didn’t stop with that. After feeding the cats, caffeinating myself, and smoking a couple cigarettes, I collected links to more than 20 other possibilities, some of them from tabs I’d opened on my computer during the past week and some I found from crawling through arrivals in the NCS email in-box over the last few days, which I hadn’t perused carefully until yesterday afternoon.

I then copied all those links into the NCS WordPress editor and opened them again at a computer in our house that has shitty wi-fi. The one with a decent internet connection is in the “family room” where the TV is, and my wife was in there catching up on the news (she wakes up ridiculously early too). Even with headphones on, I can’t listen to metal in that room when she’s there. I have to crank up the volume, and her ears are so sensitive that she can hear the sound leaking through the headphones. It annoys her because she can’t stand extreme metal. I strongly prefer that she not be annoyed. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: NOCTURNAL DEPARTURE, NIFROST, EZKATON, THE KRYPTIK, BLACK BEAST, DRAAGYN

 SHADES OF BLACK  11 Responses »
Aug 182019
 

 

Having chosen to devote so much time to posts about new death metal this weekend I haven’t been able to focus as carefully as I’d like on this week’s SHADES OF BLACK column. If the writing seems more hurried than usual, that’s why. But I didn’t make the selections hurriedly. I’m quite convinced they’re worth your time. Whether you’ll be convinced, only time will tell.

By the way, though I doubt very many people actually noticed, last week I promised a second installment of the column, in a format that I haven’t used very often — and then wasn’t able to follow through. I thought about following through today, with the same bands I’d chosen to use in the un-realized second installment of last week’s column, but haven’t done that after all. Maybe later this week. Only one of the releases I’d chosen last week has made it into this post — and it’s the first one:

NOCTURNAL DEPARTURE

Cathartic Black Rituals, released by Les Fleurs du Mal Productions on August 7th, is the debut album by a trio from Winnipeg, Manitoba, who’ve taken the name Nocturnal Departure. The album stream premiered at CVLT Nation, accompanied by a brief but enthusiastic introduction. My own introduction will also be (regrettably) brief, and enthusiastic. Continue reading »

BENEATH THE NCS RADAR (PART 10)

 Album Reviews  19 Responses »
Apr 042016
 

collage

 

(Our contributor from Norway, Gorger, is back with the tenth edition of his series recommending releases that we’ve managed to overlook. To find more of his discoveries, visit Gorger’s Metal.)

Greetings good folks.

My last installment contained 6 releases. This time I only present two. They are longer, and hopefully a bit more in depth.

Both consist of what I like to refer to as regional flavours.

The first one takes you through the fjords and up the mountainside to meet a debuting Norwegian act.

The second bulletin takes you to French Canada, and a band I’m sure many of you have encountered before. Continue reading »